People frequently make decisions based on the recommendations of others. For example, many people will not go to a movie if their favorite movie critic gives the movie a negative review. With the advent of the Internet, people are relying less on the opinions of “expert” critics and more on the opinions of “communities”, as expressed by the individual and cumulative survey results at the many survey and polling sites on the Internet.
The best time to capture survey or polling data is immediately following the event that is the topic of the survey or poll. Unfortunately, movie reviews and restaurant reviews typically do not take place until hours after the user has eaten or seen the movie. This is due to the fact that the user typically must return home from an event, connect a computer to the Internet, and then navigate to the appropriate polling site before the user can take a survey about the event. By that time the user might have forgotten some of the details, or might not bother filling out a survey at all.
Based on the foregoing, it is clearly desirable to provide techniques for capturing polling and survey data in a manner that is both convenient and immediate.